This chapter argues that in the course of the seventh century, because of its special status as a missionary Church, England developed forms of higher episcopacy unique in the Latin West. To be fully understood, these arrangements must be placed in a much wider context, ranging from Gaul at one extreme to the Greek East at the other. Janet Nelson, who has written so tellingly about the Franks and their neighbours, has encouraged readers to adopt a comparative approach when thinking about early medieval Europe, and the chapter is offered in gratitude for her teaching and example. The chapter starts with Pope Gregory the Great's celebrated plan for the English episcopate. Where Gregory the Great had his way, authority was mediated through a papal agent, whose position was personal and derived primarily from the pallium, a relic-vestment imbued with Petrine power, rather than from occupation of a specific see.

In the highly politicised world of nineteenth-century Russian religious culture, translation of the Bible became a source of major conflict. Who had the right to translate the Bible? What base texts were authoritative? What was to be the language of the modern Russian Bible? This chapter focuses on the controversy dividing Russian prelates in the 1850s over the renewal of Russian biblical translation efforts following the thirty-year hiatus imposed by Emperor Nicholas I. The chapter explores four touchstone moments when the politics of empire and nation came to be sharply represented in conflicts over biblical translation: (1) the conflict in the early nineteenth century over the imperially sanctioned Russian Bible Society; (2) the internal debate of the 1850s in the Holy Synod over the reopening of modern Russian biblical translation; (3) the conflicts linking the Jewish question with biblical translation in the last half of the nineteenth century; and, briefly, (4) the contemporary issue of biblical translation in the context of the current international conflict over Ukraine. The chapter argues that these fault lines reflected deep divisions over how best to accommodate ethnic diversity and incipient secularisation within Russian religious culture from the nineteenth century to the present day.

An overview of the formation of one of the main campaign groups seeking marriage for same-sex couples: Marriage Equality. The strategy of this group was to improve LGBT visibility and justify why same-sex couples could only achieve equality through access to civil marriage. Its second strategy was political engagement. This was an intrinsic aspect to ensure that those in positions of political power would implement the changes required to introduce marriage equality.

While historians of early modern Britain have long noted the ubiquity of Old Testament typology in religious-political discourse, its enduring potency thereafter has received much less attention. In part this is because of the flexibility of such rhetoric, for while posing as a ‘new Israel’ worked for embattled states like sixteenth-century England, this was not the only rhetorical option available; nor was it always the most apposite comparison, especially in the era of British global hegemony. This chapter argues that maritime imperial expansion lent particular weight to one set of passages, those concerning ancient seagoing Tyre and Tarshish. What they stood for was seldom stable: they were read prophetically, as literally presaging Britain’s current greatness; typologically, as warnings against the besetting sins of commercial greed and pride; and moralistically, as examples of the problems caused by imperial overstretch. I seek to show that British people in the nineteenth century continued to map the world and their place in it in biblical terms, to an extent that has sometimes been underplayed. What that meant, however, was increasingly open to interpretation.

James Robertson Justice became a star for his role as Sir Lancelot Spratt in Doctor in the House and this chapter describes the appeal of this screen patriarch to the British public. One often overlooked element of the character is the skill and attention to detail applied by an actor who enjoyed claiming a lack of thespian skills. Yet his image, on- and off-screen, was carefully contrived and his Rank contract stardom of the 1950s masked a more subtle and nuanced actor. Roles in Anthony Asquith’s Orders to Kill and the prisoner-of-war comedy thriller Very Important Person were reminders of talents so frequently employed in shoring-up comedy films rooted in an ethos that harked back to the 1930s.

This chapter is an investigation of the nature of political society in later medieval England, though the angle from which it approaches it is notably oblique. Its starting point is an attempt to investigate the nature and significance of the religious sanction enjoyed by the political order through an examination of the changes in the definitions of sanctity that occurred within this period. Later medieval England was unusually rich in one further group of candidates for sanctity, the 'political' saints. The chapter discusses principal representatives of this group, who will receive more detailed attention in this paper, are well known: Simon de Montfort, Thomas of Lancaster, Edward II, Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, Henry VI. Political saints were no different from the other saints venerated in later medieval England in being valued 'not primarily as exemplars or soulfriends, but as powerful helpers and healers in time of need'.

This introduction invites readers look back on their previous training in literary studies. It looks at the assumptions behind traditional literary criticism, or 'liberal humanism' as theorists usually call it. The word 'liberal' in this formulation means not politically radical, and hence generally evasive and non-committal on political issues. 'Humanism' implies something similar; it suggests a range of negative attributes, such as 'non-Marxist' and 'non-feminist', and 'non-theoretical'. The chapter explains that we are looking, in literary theory, for something we can use, not something which will use us. It suggests a useful form of intensive reading, known as 'SQ3R' or 'SQRRR', which breaks down the reading of a difficult chapter or article into five stages, as designated by the letters 'SQRRR'. The stages are: Survey, Question, Read, Recall, and Review. The chapter includes a STOP and THINK section to help readers reflect on the nature of literary education to date.